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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028178">Memory wiping offers a clean mental slate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spindizzy/pseuds/Spindizzy'>Spindizzy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Remember Me (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Meta, Nonfiction, Prison</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 13:01:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>717</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028178</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spindizzy/pseuds/Spindizzy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"They have no recollection of their time at La Bastille and no escapes have ever taken place. What more could you ask of a prison?"</p>
<p>Meta about a Neo-Paris landmark.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>March Meta Matters Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Memory wiping offers a clean mental slate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted on tumblr during 2013. Looking back, I don't think I accounted enough for how messed up most countries' prison systems are, but my central thesis of <em>this is a terrible system</em> still stands!</p>
<p>Caution warnings: non-consensual memory removal and alteration, quote of a rape joke, prisons that are somehow even worse than usual</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>They have no recollection of their time at La Bastille and no escapes have ever taken place. What more could you ask of a prison?</p>
  <p>— <em>Neo-Paris Landmarks, La Bastille fortress</em> (Remember Me)</p>
</blockquote><p>No, listen, can we talk about this? In Remember Me, La Bastille Fortress is a prison where people are incarcerated, have their memory temporarily cut and paste into a computer (They don’t remember anything outside these walls! Why would they want to leave! Hence no escapes.), live out their sentences, and get their memory restored on exit.</p>
<p>They also get their memories of their prison time wiped.</p>
<p>Can we – right, here is my problem with this. THERE ARE MANY. Firstly, that is an ethical nightmare, and not just because of the mental torture aspects of non-consensually destroying someone’s sense of self to make them easier to lock in a box for a decade. ANYTHING could happen to you in that prison and you a) wouldn’t know that this was wrong, because you wouldn’t remember anything being any other way, and b) wouldn’t be able to complain about it once you DID get your memories back! Because you wouldn’t remember! Theoretically, this is why EVERYONE is mind-wiped, to minimise conflict, and also why most of the systems have been automated, but —</p>
<p>— But there’s a guard, and one of the last things you hear him say to his colleagues as he walks into the locker room is “Time for your cavity search, ladies!” I don’t want to speculate on how he’d treat prisoners.</p>
<p>SECONDLY, this sounds like a terrible way to deal with crime! In real life, you theoretically go to prison to learn from your mistakes – you go inside, you find religion or learn new skills or get taught how not to get caught, and you either turn your life around or you don’t - but prison still affects you. In <em>this</em> setting, you get to prison. You’re hooked up to a machine. And then you’re unhooked from a machine and… You’re older. Your hands are wrinklier, maybe; you’re a different body shape than you were when you sat down; you have aches and pains and scars that you didn’t have - as far as you’re concerned - five minutes ago. And… What? Someone tells you that you’ve served out your sentence and lets you go? And you walk out of La Bastille into a city that you don’t recognise and have to find your way around like some sort of futuristic Rip Van Winkle?</p>
<p>What do you LEARN from that? You have no sense of time passing, any anger you had will still be fresh in your mind (assuming that in five minutes play time I don’t discover that they actually swirl people’s memories around before they go to make them more palatable), any pressing problems you have will still be RIGHT THERE - but you’re in a body that’s older than it should be, and everything’s gone and moved on and you don’t even have the awareness that it could’ve. You won’t have had the chance to make any changes to yourself to keep up.</p>
<p>What I THOUGHT was happening, from the initial description in the landmark entry ("Memory wiping offers them a clean mental slate on which they can re-invent themselves.") was that they’d have ALL of their memories when they left - so you’d have someone who thought they were an otherwise decent, normal person, suddenly realise that the last decade of their life was weird and terrible and wrong AND ALSO the reason for that is that a decade ago they killed a guy. And then they’d have to acclimatise those versions of themselves. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.</p>
<p>I know that the people running La Bastille are the villains. I KNOW. I’m on a mission to go and punch one of them RIGHT NOW, it’s just… I can’t envision how anyone thought that was a good plan. I can’t wrap my head around how it would actually work as a punitive or reform system, unless it’s one of those meat-grinder situations and people go in and never come out. But.. .Surely people would NOTICE that?</p>
<p>TL;DR I AM HAVING TOO MANY INTENSE THOUGHTS ABOUT THE WORLD BUILDING OF THIS GAME. SOMEBODY SMARTER THAN ME PLAY IT AND CORRECT MY BEING WRONG.</p>
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